Gallery / museum curation

Curators are responsible for organising and managing exhibitions of permanent and/or one-off collections in galleries and museums – which includes every detail of each exhibition, from buying or borrowing art and artefacts, assembling and supervising the exhibition, cataloguing collections, and even writing exhibition catalogues. The lead curator will also be involved in the commercial side of the exhibition, eg the budgeting and negotiations with exhibitors.

The conditions

On paper, this is more a managerial role in large institutions that are at the more ‘sedate’ end of the art and design profession. In reality, it also involves quite anti-social hours. As these are public-facing institutions, weekend and evening work is to be expected, as is considerable pressure to cope with last-minute glitches, such as delayed arrival of artefacts, in the run-up to exhibitions.

The upside: inspiring thousands of people who come to your gallery.

The downside: the pay – you may start on as little as £12,000 per year for a curatorial assistant in a public sector gallery or museum. However, if you’re prepared to take rather more pressure, the auction houses, eg Christie’s and Sotheby's, certainly pay more.